anthropology is not a science?
Apologies for the two previous blank messages. For some reason, when I converted text from HTML to plain, it disappeared after I hit "send." At least that's how it appeared on my screen after sending (and seeing the blank postings). Anyway, here's what I sent: ************** It seems like this topic has been made relevant to this list, or least I'm enjoying reading about it. Although I'm not an anthropologist, it's clear that a growing number of anthropologists are contributing to the body of research knowledge about the Internet. Moreover, scholars from a variety of fields (anthropology, sociology, psychology, communication) have been pushing the boundaries of ethnographic methods by studying Internet use. I'm guessing that anthropologists and ethnographers from other fields would have a lot of interest in this topic, given its implications for research about such things as the impact of the Internet on immigration patterns, the Internet's role in the maintenance of disaporic communities, how religious and ethnic identities are sustained through the uses of the Internet, and much more. As for the disagreement at hand, about whether anthropology is a "science," I'm skeptical that there is a compelling argument for why it is not, but it's an interesting topic for respectful disagreement in any case. The assertion that anthropology is "not a science" (whatever that means) probably doesn't sit well with many anthropologists who study Internet use, or with other Internet researchers who employ methods that originated in anthropology, as well as with others on the list who'd simply like to be enlightened as to what the standards are that are used to judge whether their research is scientific. Many philosophers of science characterize scientific theories as highly formalized arguments, and the purpose of scientific inquiry as efforts not to prove that such arguments are right, but rather to systematically demonstrate weaknesses and limitations in claims to the contrary. Based on that presumption of the purpose of science, I think it would be easy enough to show that such contributions are made by anthropologists all the time. As to the fact that the objects and conditions of analysis that anthropologists choose to study are often not replicable and may not lend themselves easily to the statistical measurement of regularities and explained variance, this does not disqualify anthropology as "science," unless we are prepared to say the same about the work of many astronomers, geologists and other natural scientists. Andrew Calabrese School of Journalism and Mass Communication University of Colorado http://spot.colorado.edu/~calabres/ -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Barry Saunders Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 7:10 AM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] Religious Dimension of Sustainable Development indeed. i'm not quite sure how the original post relates to this list, for that matter. /nipped -- Barry Saunders ---- http://investigativeblog.net http://gatewatching.org http://youdecide2007.org ---- PhD Candidate // researcher http://creativeindustries.qut.edu.au http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Saunders,_Barry.html ph: 07 3138 0155 skype: barry_saunders CRICOS No. 00213J ________________________________________ From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Alexis Turner [subbies@redheadedstepchild.org] Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 12:05 AM To: AIR-L Subject: Re: [Air-L] Religious Dimension of Sustainable Development While no doubt a fascinating topic of conversation, I am not able to see that this directly relates to Internet research and would like to politely suggest we nip this conversation in the bud immediately. There are more appropriate forums. -Alexis
Dear Andrew: Thanks very much for your considered reply on whether anthropology is or is not a science. I agree, like you, that the topic is relevant to this list, at least with regard to the intersection with Internet research. Let me add a couple of caveats to your comments. Whether a discipline is or is not a 'science' has been a concern for many niches of specialization, and one with which many of us on this list are familiar is the area of communication and the media. Some university departments, particularly in Europe, identify themselves as concerned with 'Communication Science' and, in so doing, take a stance on what constitutes suitable questions and methods to study those questions. Other departments concentrate on what they term ' communication studies' or 'media studies', and these departments usually embrace a broader set of scholarly concerns and modes of study. Similar approaches are evident with regard to exploring the Internet: there are (divisions of) departments dealing with 'Internet Studies' and others prefer the label 'Internet Science' and the implied scholarly focus and related research methodologies. A parallel dichotomy is present in an area that I have been working, sometimes called e-science and sometimes termed - especially in the U.S. - cyberinfrastructure. For a JCMC theme issue related to that development (published about this time last year), we used the term e-science and eventually came to regret employment of it because of the constrictive and limiting associations. In the follow-up volume to that theme issue, which we are now preparing, we use and argue for a more embracing term, e-research, that is more amenable to disciplines in the humanities and to disciplines in the social sciences less 'tainted' by a positivistic approach to scholarship. Ultimately, I argue in the introduction to that volume, it is understanding achieved through a diversity of scholarly approaches that is important rather than application of a particular set of 'scientific' procedures labeled the 'scientific method' that are all too often deemed superior to qualitative or interpretative approaches to scholarship. A parallel argument could - I would say 'should' - be applied to study of the Internet: understanding is fundamentally more important than adherence to what may be considered science or the scientific method, and such understanding is achieved through a variety of ways of knowing, which most certainly includes anthropology. Thanks again, Andrew, for your reflections. Nick Jankowski Visiting Fellow Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities and Social Sciences Amsterdam, Netherlands www.virtualknowledgestudio.nl At 04:26 AM 1/9/2008, you wrote:
As for the disagreement at hand, about whether anthropology is a "science," I'm skeptical that there is a compelling argument for why it is not, but it's an interesting topic for respectful disagreement in any case. The assertion that anthropology is "not a science" (whatever that means) probably doesn't sit well with many anthropologists who study Internet use, or with other Internet researchers who employ methods that originated in anthropology, as well as with others on the list who'd simply like to be enlightened as to what the standards are that are used to judge whether their research is scientific. Many philosophers of science characterize scientific theories as highly formalized arguments, and the purpose of scientific inquiry as efforts not to prove that such arguments are right, but rather to systematically demonstrate weaknesses and limitations in claims to the contrary. Based on that presumption of the purpose of science, I think it would be easy enough to show that such contributions are made by anthropologists all the time. As to the fact that the objects and conditions of analysis that anthropologists choose to study are often not replicable and may not lend themselves easily to the statistical measurement of regularities and explained variance, this does not disqualify anthropology as "science," unless we are prepared to say the same about the work of many astronomers, geologists and other natural scientists.
Andrew Calabrese School of Journalism and Mass Communication University of Colorado http://spot.colorado.edu/~calabres/
I just wanna point out that I was not taking a position on whether anthropology is a SOCIAL science or not. Just that the original poster was claiming scientific evidence, in a way that implied it was from the biological / 'hard' sciences, and that I would like to see said evidence. Respect to anthropology, and respect to people researching TEK and sustainability (one of my personal passions, I might add) - let's just avoid making claims about human nature that label a whole group of people as less than human. -- Barry Saunders ---- http://investigativeblog.net http://gatewatching.org http://youdecide2007.org ---- PhD Candidate // researcher http://creativeindustries.qut.edu.au http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Saunders,_Barry.html ph: 07 3138 0155 skype: barry_saunders CRICOS No. 00213J
I just wanna point out that I was not taking a position on whether anthropology is a SOCIAL science or not. Just that the original poster was claiming scientific evidence, in a way that implied it was from the biological / 'hard' sciences, and that I would like to see said evidence.
Respect to anthropology, and respect to people researching TEK and sustainability (one of my personal passions, I might add) - let's just avoid making claims about human nature that label a whole group of people as less than human.
Both points well taken, of course! And isn't it interesting to see what sort of discussion has unfolded from all of this? Many thanks, all! - charles ess
Dear Air-ers - While I come late to this topic, I concur with Nick that the e-science can be misleading - as I indicated forcefully to Sally Wyatt at the e-Science/e-Research roundtable in Vancouver. e-Science suggests that internet research is answerable to the scientific method (disproving the null hypothesis). Some e-Research does that, much does not. And before folks go crazy with that, social science has frequently employed the scientific method, particularly in psychological studies. Our understanding of the discipline, social science, employs the term science as Wissenschaft, or a generalised sense of knowledge, as in what can be discovered or known about a given topic. In that sense, e-Social Science can still describe a domain of knowledge much more comfortably than e-Science. One would have to seriously re-work the word science, as was attempted by Gibbons et al. in 1994. Some may feel they were successful, I do not. No lesser scholar than Bruno Latour said, "science is the hard object, the more we seek to learn about it, the more it resists our efforts" (quote from memory, seminar in Said School of Business, Oxford, "Four + one uncertainties in social science" in 2002. The articulation of e-Research was suggested by a 2005 seminar of Christine Borgmann speaking to the OII. The link is: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=91 I know other worthy scholars are working on this topic, and despite the hard work of Michael Nentwich, (2003) I think that Nick and others will stay with e-Research out of necessity, perhaps. But I applaud their efforts in this area. Cheers, Denise Denise N. Rall, PhD Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Tues: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 Mobile 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/esm/staff/pages/drall/ Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html Make the switch to the world's best email. Get the new Yahoo!7 Mail now. www.yahoo7.com.au/worldsbestemail
I'm not surprised by the definition of science as the statistical study of relationships between variables. Lots of academics in the social sciences define it so. But that doesn't make it a good definition. Even the kind of scientists that variable analysts in the social sciences look up to as role models--those in biology, chemistry and particularly physics--do not restrict themselves to statistical methods for the investigation of causal relationships. And more than a little of the sociology of science literature indicates that scientists of many stripes often observe their definition of science in the breach. Indeed, definitions of science aren't always that useful for describing science, often because they are really created to perform political "boundary work" that denies some people the scarce resources available to "scientists" (whatever they are) by such entities as universities, grant agencies, etc. On Jan 14, 2008, at 5:15 PM, Denise N. Rall wrote:
Dear Air-ers -
While I come late to this topic, I concur with Nick that the e-science can be misleading - as I indicated forcefully to Sally Wyatt at the e-Science/e-Research roundtable in Vancouver.
e-Science suggests that internet research is answerable to the scientific method (disproving the null hypothesis). Some e-Research does that, much does not.
And before folks go crazy with that, social science has frequently employed the scientific method, particularly in psychological studies. Our understanding of the discipline, social science, employs the term science as Wissenschaft, or a generalised sense of knowledge, as in what can be discovered or known about a given topic.
In that sense, e-Social Science can still describe a domain of knowledge much more comfortably than e-Science. One would have to seriously re-work the word science, as was attempted by Gibbons et al. in 1994. Some may feel they were successful, I do not. No lesser scholar than Bruno Latour said, "science is the hard object, the more we seek to learn about it, the more it resists our efforts" (quote from memory, seminar in Said School of Business, Oxford, "Four + one uncertainties in social science" in 2002.
The articulation of e-Research was suggested by a 2005 seminar of Christine Borgmann speaking to the OII. The link is: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=91
I know other worthy scholars are working on this topic, and despite the hard work of Michael Nentwich, (2003) I think that Nick and others will stay with e-Research out of necessity, perhaps. But I applaud their efforts in this area.
Cheers, Denise
Denise N. Rall, PhD Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Tues: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 Mobile 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/esm/staff/pages/drall/ Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html
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I agree that it is a problem that many social scientists accept a reified definition of science, and that it is often out of sync with scientific work. I also agree that there is a political dimension to defining scientific disciplines. Bourdieu argued that a principle issue at stake in defining disciplines is scientific authority, defined inseparably as both technical capacity and social power. P. Bourdieu, 'The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reasons," Social Science Information, Vol. 14, no. 6 (1975), pp. 19-47. -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Christian Nelson Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 4:20 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] anthropology is not a science? I'm not surprised by the definition of science as the statistical study of relationships between variables. Lots of academics in the social sciences define it so. But that doesn't make it a good definition. Even the kind of scientists that variable analysts in the social sciences look up to as role models--those in biology, chemistry and particularly physics--do not restrict themselves to statistical methods for the investigation of causal relationships. And more than a little of the sociology of science literature indicates that scientists of many stripes often observe their definition of science in the breach. Indeed, definitions of science aren't always that useful for describing science, often because they are really created to perform political "boundary work" that denies some people the scarce resources available to "scientists" (whatever they are) by such entities as universities, grant agencies, etc. On Jan 14, 2008, at 5:15 PM, Denise N. Rall wrote:
Dear Air-ers -
While I come late to this topic, I concur with Nick that the e-science can be misleading - as I indicated forcefully to Sally Wyatt at the e-Science/e-Research roundtable in Vancouver.
e-Science suggests that internet research is answerable to the scientific method (disproving the null hypothesis). Some e-Research does that, much does not.
And before folks go crazy with that, social science has frequently employed the scientific method, particularly in psychological studies. Our understanding of the discipline, social science, employs the term science as Wissenschaft, or a generalised sense of knowledge, as in what can be discovered or known about a given topic.
In that sense, e-Social Science can still describe a domain of knowledge much more comfortably than e-Science. One would have to seriously re-work the word science, as was attempted by Gibbons et al. in 1994. Some may feel they were successful, I do not. No lesser scholar than Bruno Latour said, "science is the hard object, the more we seek to learn about it, the more it resists our efforts" (quote from memory, seminar in Said School of Business, Oxford, "Four + one uncertainties in social science" in 2002.
The articulation of e-Research was suggested by a 2005 seminar of Christine Borgmann speaking to the OII. The link is: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=91
I know other worthy scholars are working on this topic, and despite the hard work of Michael Nentwich, (2003) I think that Nick and others will stay with e-Research out of necessity, perhaps. But I applaud their efforts in this area.
Cheers, Denise
Denise N. Rall, PhD Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Tues: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 Mobile 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/esm/staff/pages/drall/ Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html
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Yes Christian, I couldn't agree more about the boundary work. But when I hope that the bridge will stay up, and the airplane will stay in the sky, I want the scientific method. That limits the domain of understanding considerably, but for material processes, I am more than happy to make the exception. That doesn't lessen the political burdens, but perhaps puts a box around it. It's our job as social scientists to make sure it's not a black one. Ok, that's me done. Cheers, Denise --- Christian Nelson <xianknelson@mac.com> wrote:
aren't always that useful for describing science, often because they are really created to perform political "boundary work" that denies some people the scarce resources available to "scientists" (whatever they are) by such entities as universities, grant agencies, etc.
Denise N. Rall, PhD Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Tues: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 Mobile 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/esm/staff/pages/drall/ Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html Make the switch to the world's best email. Get the new Yahoo!7 Mail now. www.yahoo7.com.au/worldsbestemail
participants (6)
-
Andrew Calabrese -
Barry Saunders -
Charles Ess -
Christian Nelson -
Denise N. Rall -
Jankowski